Here’s something most funded founders don’t know.
AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure are all competing for your stack. Right now, they’re willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get it.
Not figuratively. Literally.

Up to $100K from AWS. Up to $350K from Google Cloud. $100K+ from Microsoft. Apply to all three and you’re looking at $600K+ in free cloud infrastructure.

Most startups leave most of it on the table. They apply to one program, get a fraction of what’s available, then scramble when credits run out. We see this constantly.

The three programs

AWS Activate

Founders Package — $1,000 in credits + Developer Support. No partner needed. Any startup can apply.

Portfolio Package — up to $100K. Needs an Org ID from a VC, accelerator, or AWS partner. You have to apply within 12 months of your last funding round. That part catches people out.

Eligibility across all tiers: pre-Series B, founded within 10 years, functioning website, no prior equal or greater AWS Activate credits, and a corporate email. Not Gmail. That last one trips people up more than you’d think.

Credits cover EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, DynamoDB, SageMaker, and Bedrock including third-party models. They don’t cover Route 53 registrations, Reserved Instance upfront fees, or general Marketplace software.

Worth knowing: AWS’s free tier has real edges. Services like Kendra will quietly bill you during experimentation if you’re not watching. Set billing alerts before you deploy anything. And the fastest path to $100K is through your VC’s Org ID but ask them what tier they offer first. Top-tier VCs unlock the full amount. Smaller accelerators might only have $25K.

Google for Startups Cloud Program

The tiers here scale with your funding stage, which matters more than most people realise.

Start Tier (Unfunded) — $2,000 for 1 year. Enough to kick the tyres. Not much more.

Scale Tier (Equity-backed) — up to $100K in Year 1 at full coverage, then up to another $100K in Year 2 at 20% coverage. $200K total over 2 years. Available from pre-seed to Series A.

AI Startup Track — up to $350K over 2 years. Year 1: up to $250K at 100%. Year 2: up to $100K at 20%. AI has to be your core product, not a feature. And if you’re Series A, the round needs to have closed within the last 12 months.

Eligibility: Start tier needs you under 5 years old and unfunded. Scale and AI tracks need equity funding, under 10 years old, and less than $5K in prior GCP credits. All tiers need a domain email, GCP account, and a public website.

Covers Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery, Cloud Run, Firebase, Vertex AI, TPUs, and Google Workspace.

Worth knowing: If you’re building with AI, apply here first. $350K is the highest ceiling of any program in the market. Apply for the AI track even if AI is 30–40% of what you do and Google’s team is incentivized to fund this category and the bar isn’t as high as it sounds. Frame your infrastructure around ML workloads and inference when you apply.

Microsoft for Startups

In July 2025, Microsoft restructured the whole thing and dropped the “Founders Hub” name. Two paths now.

Azure Startup Credit Offer (no VC needed) — $1,000 immediately, valid 90 days. After business verification, up to $5,000 total, valid 180 days from verification. Needs a personal Microsoft Account and a brand new Azure account with no prior subscriptions.

Investor Network Track — starting at $100K in Azure credits, with potential for more depending on your investor and engagement level. Needs a referral code from a VC, accelerator, incubator, angel investor, or university in Microsoft’s network. Must be privately held, for-profit, software-focused, and pre-Series C — which is wider than AWS or GCP. LinkedIn account required. Lifetime Azure credits must be under $350K.

If you’re on the Investor Network track, you also get access to GitHub Enterprise, Microsoft 365, and LinkedIn Premium on top of the Azure credits. The self-service track ($1K–$5K) is credits only.

Worth knowing: If you’re on the Investor Network track, the software bundle is genuinely underrated — GitHub Enterprise, M365, LinkedIn Premium on top of the Azure credits. The pre-Series C window also gives you more time to apply than most founders expect. And if you’re on the self-service path, that initial $1K only lasts 90 days. Don’t activate it until you’re actually ready to build.

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7 things the smart founders do

1. Apply right after raising. AWS and GCP cut off at Series B. Microsoft at Series C. Don’t wait until your infra is on fire.

2. Get a referral before you apply. For AWS, applying directly vs. through your VC is $1K vs $100K. Ask first.

3. Corporate email for AWS. Not Gmail. Personal accounts get rejected.

4. Don’t start the clock early. Azure’s $1K lasts 90 days. GCP gives you 2 years. AWS is 1–2 years. Only activate when you’re ready to build — AWS won’t extend expired credits.

5. Set billing alerts before your first deploy. Credits don’t protect you from misconfigured services. Set thresholds at $50, $100, and $500. AWS especially.

6. Prepare a one-pager before applying. Traction, problem, forecasted spend by service, basic architecture sketch. At GCP and Azure this tends to unlock better tiers.

7. Plan for when credits run out — from day one. They last 12–24 months. We’ve seen $200K burned on oversized infra, then a $30K bill nobody can explain. Build for real scale, not just what’s free right now.

Cloud credits buy you time. What you do with that time is the whole game.

We’ve watched startups burn through $200K on infrastructure that was three sizes too big for where they actually were. Credits run out, the bill arrives, and nobody can explain it to the board. That conversation is not fun.

This is what we spend our days doing at DevOps94, which is helping seed to Series B founders build infra that actually holds up. If you want to talk through your setup, check out our website at devops94.com to book a quick chat . Or just connect on LinkedIn. I post about this stuff regularly.